


eyes turned skyward

by sternflotte



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Multi, Puppy Love, UST, everyone watch this series!, i cant decide between either ship, my poor boy is confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflotte/pseuds/sternflotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I thought you wouldn’t show, man.” Shao says quietly, half into the music like he expects the words to be swallowed by the beat, half with the sharp, loud tones of someone hit by sudden courage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	eyes turned skyward

**Author's Note:**

> oh man, this show. I binged it in a day, fell asleep thinking about it, woke thinking about it and spent a whole day listening to the soundtrack while writing this. 
> 
> please know that i know absolutely nothing of Bronx, the 1970s or Hip Hop music, but i loved these characters so I had to get something out. i am also a white girl who knows nothing of the struggles these kids go through. please please tell me if I am being disrespectful/stereotypical/racist, because i honestly just want to give an homage to these characters. 
> 
> this does not have a plot, but i am pretty sure this will get more ficlets added to it, because god knows i love this show.
> 
> please read& review and if something rubbed you the wrong way please please tell me. i want to improve my writing and my understanding of these characters. 
> 
> come cry with me about this show at lyannathrace.tumblr.com
> 
> cheers, thallen!

It takes Zeke a while to realize what this feeling is.

 

At first he thinks its the euphoria from winning the DJ Battle, his heart racing as he and Shaolin do the double-thump-flash-twist-fist-bump as he falls on the sofa next to his friend. Boo and Ra are jumping all around them, shouting and jumping to the beat off the turntable. Dizzee sits in the armchair off to the side, head raised towards the ceiling, fingers moving to a beat only he can hear.

 

“I thought you wouldn’t show, man.” Shao says quietly, half into the music like he expects the words to be swallowed by the beat, half with the sharp, loud tones of someone hit by sudden courage.

 

“Of course I was.” Zeke says after a beat of hesitation. He would have been offended if he hadn’t had to run to make it. As such he gives Shao a small smile, making Shao look down at the bottle in his hands.

 

Shao is quiet, so at odds with his usually loud-mouthed bravado. “Yeah.” He says after a couple of moments, looking away and taking a sip of his beer.

 

Zeke nudges Shao with his shoulder. “You good?”

 

“Of course.” Shoa smirks, looking down and swallowing.

 

Zeke wants to call him out for being a liar, but no good would come of that. Shoulders pressed together and a bottle passing easily between them, the silence hangs easily between them, above an ambiance of noise. Shao makes no move towards space, so Zeke stays where he is. It is nice, Zeke thinks, being able to sit together with someone without needing to talk. Even a wordsmith needed a break from talking every once in a while.

  


**

  


The thing with Mylene goes about as well as anyone would have thought. Mylene is off singing, dancing and making her music in Manhattan, coming home only on the weekends she has no jobs booked.

 

Maybe Shaolin was right, Zeke thinks watching as his girl holds court to her adoring well wishers at the Cruz Church, passing out smiles and squeezing hands to send out good fortune to everyone still living up in the Bronx, that a king has to make his own kingdom. Mylene made hers in a land of song, in white folks who know nothing about her and of black and brown folks that know to much.

 

She lives in two different world, so at odds with each other even Mylene has problems distinguishing one from the other.

 

“I miss air condition.” Mylene says, one early August morning. Zeke spends the earliest moments before dawn with her, when the sun has already cracked the darkness of a hot Bronx Summers night, lying on the roof of the Cruz home passing a joint between the two of them.

 

Zeke thinks of the cool air at the office, of being cold in the middle of the summer because them white folks got air condition in their houses, in their cars and in their office so they know the cold, but Zeke – he runs on a temperature of the Bronx – higher than the white folks will ever know.

 

He likes the feeling of the heat from the cement against his bare back and the faint prickle of sweat on his forehead. He for sure likes it more than being cold whenever he goes downtown.

 

“Nah.” He says simply. His thoughts sink into the ground, untouchable even for Mylene whose stomach muscles flutter as he runs a light finger over them.

 

Mylene turns and looks at him, a smile playing on her face. “My Tio says I need a real album out next year, with my own songs and my own music.”

 

“Yeah?” Zeke traces a path from her jaw down her shoulders and arms and her waist and up again, going round and round in circles. The softness of her skin is so at odds with the sensation of the roof tiles digging into his spine. His body sinks into the warmth of the roof, and Zeke feels like the jelly he and Ra used to melt on the burning asphalt as kids.

 

“I was thinking, Zeke. And I know you are real good with words.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Could you write something for me?”

 

“For what?”

 

“My album, Zeke. Are you even listening to me?”

 

“Of course I am.” Zeke takes the joint from Mylene’s fingers and inhales deeply. How different could writing something wholesome for Mylene’s music be to writing for Shao’s beats, Zeke thinks, he is a natural after all. He blows the smoke into the purple morning sky and watches the rings disappear slowly.

 

“So?” Mylene asks, impatiently waiting.

 

How hard could it be to write something to the wack part, for the wack part? Something good, something that the folks downtown can relate to so Mylene and Yolanda and Regina can take America by a storm. Would he ever stand in the elevator somewhere in Manhattan moving to the sounds of his own words sung back at him.

 

“Of course I will write something.” Zeke says, ignoring the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Shao. He rolls around to free himself from the ground that threatens to swallow him whole. “Everything for my girl.”

  


**

  


They experiment, Shao and him alone in the temple with only the turntable and the down beat as company. Zeke pulls the words out of thin airand they giggle as the words trip over the beat, stumbling as Shao misses the turn letting Aretha Franklins powerful voice ring over them.

 

Zeke collapses on the couch. He feels like he is floating on the clouds, like he is flying and he laughs to himself. “ _Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return._ ” He says softly, remembering suddenly.

 

“What?”

 

“I will never want to do anything else.” Zeke says softly. He turns and blinks up at Shao’s face, much closer than he had expected. Even in the sticky humid air of their temple, Shao’s warm breath feels cool against his burning skin.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.” Zeke grins up at Shao, his friend who had wormed himself into his heart so easily. Shao, who is so vibrant and loud and sure of what he wants, smiles back and they stare at each other. His head is full of smoke, of thoughts not even the wordsmith can put into words, but the one thought he can decipher is the one that tells him that this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

 

“Good.” Is the only the Shao says. His eyes drop, they linger and he ducks away from Zeke, who sits up confused and feeling somewhat dazed. He watches Shao move to the turntable, fiddling with the records, the controls and Shao doesn’t look at him again.

 

Zeke sighs, falling into the sofa as the pressure returns to his chest. He lets his head fall back against the backrest of the couch and screws his eyes shut.

  


  


  


  



End file.
